Trello vs Jira: Plans, Limits and Kanban Boards Compared

Trello vs Jira is a choice between two Atlassian products that both show work on a kanban board. Trello is a general board tool for any team. Jira is a work-tracking system built for software teams, with a board as one of several views. This comparison covers plans, limits, prices and board features as of October 2026, so you can decide which one fits your team.

Trello vs Jira at a glance

The short version: pick Trello when you want a shared board with little setup. Pick Jira when you need workflows, a backlog, sprints and reports on top of the board.

Sources: Trello pricing and Jira pricing, checked on October 20, 2026.

Atlassian and Trello: how the two products relate

Trello launched in 2011. Atlassian, the company behind Jira and Confluence, announced it would buy Trello in January 2017. Atlassian’s announcement filed with the SEC valued the deal at about $425 million and said Trello had over 19 million users.

Trello still runs as its own product with its own plans. It now uses Atlassian accounts, and Atlassian Guard adds single sign-on across Trello and Jira. A team can use both: Trello for marketing or operations work, and Jira for the engineering backlog.

The Trello kanban board

A Trello board is a set of lists, and each list holds cards. You drag a card from one list to the next as work moves. Cards hold a description, checklists, labels, members, due dates, attachments and comments.

A new user has only boards, lists and cards to learn. The same board works for a content calendar, a hiring pipeline or a family to-do list. Power-Ups add features such as calendars and integrations, and Trello’s pricing page lists more than 200 apps that connect this way.

Trello has limits as a kanban tool:

• Trello’s plan comparison lists no work-in-progress limit feature. Teams add one through third-party Power-Ups such as Corrello’s Agile Tools, which set a card limit per list.
• Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard and Map views need the Premium plan.
• Custom fields and advanced checklists start on the Standard plan.

The Jira kanban board

Jira organizes work into spaces (projects) that hold work items, such as stories, bugs and tasks. Each work item moves through a workflow, and a board shows that workflow as columns.

Jira’s board supports the kanban practice of limiting work in progress. Atlassian’s guide to configuring columns explains column constraints: you set a minimum or maximum number of work items per column. A column header turns red when the maximum is exceeded and yellow when the minimum is not met. The limit is a visual warning, so Jira still lets people move work into a full column.

The same work items also appear in list, timeline, calendar and summary views, and Jira adds reports and dashboards. That depth is why Jira takes longer to set up. Someone has to decide on work types, workflows and permissions before the board is useful.

Trello vs Jira pricing and free plans

Both tools have a free plan for up to 10 people, but the limits differ.

Trello plans (October 2026)

According to Trello’s pricing page:

• Free: $0 for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, up to 10 boards per Workspace, unlimited cards, unlimited Power-Ups, files up to 10MB each, and 250 automation command runs per month. AI features are not included.
• Standard: $5 per user per month billed annually, or $6 billed monthly. It adds AI features, unlimited boards, custom fields, advanced checklists, 250MB files and 1,000 command runs per month.
• Premium: $10 per user per month billed annually, or $12.50 billed monthly. It adds Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard and Map views, unlimited command runs and admin controls.
• Enterprise: $17.50 per user per month, billed annually.

The 10-collaborator cap covers the whole Workspace, including guests and pending invites. Trello’s support article on Workspace collaborator limits says that a free Workspace over the limit turns its boards view-only, and its automations stop running.

Jira plans (October 2026)

According to Jira’s pricing page:

• Free: $0 for up to 10 users, with backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar and summary views, 2GB of storage, 150 automation steps per month for the whole subscription, and community support.
• Standard: $8.48 per user per month on monthly billing. It adds Rovo AI search, chat and agents, user roles and permissions, 250GB of storage, and 400 automation steps per user per month.
• Premium: $15.56 per user per month on monthly billing. It adds cross-team planning, dependency management across spaces, unlimited storage and 750 automation steps per user per month.
• Enterprise: priced on annual billing through Atlassian sales.

Jira’s free plan includes more views than Trello’s, because timeline and calendar are free in Jira. Trello’s paid plans cost less per user.

A worked example: a team of 12

Say a marketing team of 12 wants one shared board for campaign work. Both free plans stop at 10 people, so the team needs a paid plan in either tool.

• On Trello Standard, 12 users at $5 per user per month billed annually cost $60 a month, or $720 a year. Calendar and Timeline views would still need Premium, at $120 a month on annual billing.
• On Jira Standard, the listed rate is $8.48 per user per month on monthly billing. The board, timeline and calendar views are already included. Jira’s pricing page has a team-size field that calculates the total for your exact number of users.

A team of 10 or fewer that only needs a board pays nothing in either tool.

AI features in Trello and Jira

Trello’s AI features and Jira’s Rovo agents both start on the Standard plan, although Jira Free lists AI-driven reports and dashboards.

The Trello pricing comparison lists AI summarization of card descriptions and comments, AI organization that generates checklists and adds due dates, and AI-generated boards built from a description of your goal. Trello Free has none of these.

Jira’s AI is Atlassian Rovo. On Jira’s pricing page, Standard includes Rovo Search, Chat and Agents with 25 Rovo credits per user per month. Premium raises that to 70 credits, and Enterprise to 150. Jira’s plan comparison also lists a Rovo MCP Server, which lets outside AI agents connect to Jira data.

Jira vs Trello for different teams

The deciding question is how much structure your work needs.

Choose Trello when:

• Your team is non-technical, or mixes people from several departments.
• You want people to use the board on day one with no setup.
• Your process fits a few lists, such as To Do, Doing and Done.
• You rely on Power-Ups to connect other tools.

Choose Jira when:

• You run software delivery with sprints, releases and bug tracking.
• You need a custom workflow for each type of work.
• You want built-in column limits, timelines and reports on the free plan.
• You already use other Atlassian products, such as Confluence or Bitbucket.

Moving between Trello and Jira

Any Trello board member can export a board as JSON on any plan, according to Atlassian’s guide to exporting data from Trello. CSV export needs a Premium Workspace. Jira can import work items from a CSV file, so a CSV export from a Premium Workspace can go straight into Jira.

A third option: a kanban board inside WordPress

If your team already works in a WordPress site, a plugin can put the board in the WordPress admin instead. KanbanWP is a free GPLv2 plugin that does this. It is a different kind of tool from Trello and Jira, because you host it yourself.

KanbanWP has:

• Unlimited boards with stages, drag and drop, and WIP limits per stage.
• Kanban, List, Table, Calendar, Timeline and My Tasks views.
• Sign-in with existing WordPress accounts, and board roles of admin, member, viewer and client.
• Cards that link to WordPress posts and pages.
• An importer for Trello JSON exports. Lists become stages, and cards keep their labels, due dates and comments. Checklist items are added to the task description.

KanbanWP needs a WordPress site, and you handle hosting, backups and updates. It has no native mobile app, though the board works in a mobile browser. For a direct comparison, read KanbanWP vs Trello. The steps for moving a board are in importing from Trello.

Other comparisons

• Best Trello alternatives in 2027 covers Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, Notion and open-source boards.
• Best free kanban board software in 2027 compares free plans and self-hosted tools.
• Why kanban works explains WIP limits and flow, and the WIP limits documentation shows how KanbanWP applies them.